by E. J. Swift
The bubble is illuminated once more. The air in here is warm and amniotic. A ripple lifts me up, off the sand. I’m moving. Ahead, basilosaurus’s tail sweeps up and down in powerful strokes. The bubble is following. We gain speed and soon we are coasting along the ocean floor. I marvel at the deep sea denizens. Weeds and grasses wave delicate arms. Small creatures burrow into the sand and vanish.
The ocean bed slopes abruptly. We are travelling into darker, deeper territory. Here the shapes of the ocean dwellers are indistinct; things that pulse and quiver. We approach a formation of rocks. As we draw nearer I see there are many, separate piles, with uneven surfaces.
We have come to an ossuary. The bones are stacked in small pyramids. Beyond them I see more pyramids, stretching back into the impenetrable gloom. The empty eye sockets of a million skulls, alien in form. How did they die? How did they come to be here?
I feel a sudden, forceful shudder through the water. The bones start to shake. The stacks falter, a skull falls from the top and rolls across the floor towards me. Red pigment bleeds through its teeth, swirling out.
The bubble bursts. I watch crimson water pouring in. I gulp air. I don’t want to drown, but the stream is ready to immerse me. As if the cave roof has collapsed, and the ocean is seeping through, but I am not in the cave, I am at the bottom of the Eocene ocean, and it is cold.
It shouldn’t be cold.
It shouldn’t be this cold.
My eyes open. I’m panting. Dim light fills my vision. Stacks of kegs. Drip, drip. Drip, drip. The puddle in the keg room. It never disappears, no matter what they do. Where does the water come from? Gabriela is slumped beside me, her cheek to the floor. I can see her eyes moving behind their lids.
My head feels heavy and drugged.
“Gabriela.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “Gabriela, wake up.”
Remnants of the dream—or transportation—flutter. A shell on the ocean floor. I can still feel its smooth convex curve against my palm.
Is she in the same place?
I give her shoulder a shake.
“Wake up.”
Gabriela’s fingers twitch. I watch anxiously as she comes back to consciousness. All at once, I’m aware of how irresponsible I have been in bringing her here. It’s different for me: I know the anomaly. Gabriela does not, and I hadn’t even considered the possibility that it might put her in danger.
“Are you okay? Were you dreaming?”
Gabriela blinks, rubs her eyes. She looks dazed. From the other side of the wall, I hear the faint hum of the generator. Gurgling in the lines. The day staff must have started.
“Strange,” she says. “I was swimming.”
“Deep in the ocean?” I ask. “Were there skulls?”
“Skulls? No! Nothing like that. Very pleasant, warm water.” Gabriela brushes dirt off her trousers.
“So you didn’t travel?”
“No. Perhaps you are right. It only works for you.”
I am ashamed of the flood of relief when she says this.
“And you?”
“No. I was just dreaming too.”
“What’s that in your hand?”
I look down. My fingers are clenched into a fist. When I uncurl them, sand trickles from my palm. I pinch the grains between index finger and thumb.
“Let’s go, Hallie. We need sleep. This place—” She shakes her head. “It’s not good for you. You should spend less time down here.”
DID GABRIELA SENSE my guilty relief? She does not ask to try and travel again. On the nights when I defer going to Oz to hide downstairs, she catches my eye and I know she knows what I’m up to. Sometimes she presses me to come with the others, sometimes she doesn’t. But what can I do? The anomaly calls me; I have to answer.
When I step into a different time, the world is clean and untouched. It does not matter if it is the bloodiest revolution or the dullest of mornings—in my eyes, it has just been made, and I, appearing in it for the first time, am new again. The anomaly makes me a master of invention. I pull worlds out of a hat and I slip between them, unseen. I have no facades to maintain. I can always move on.
Not far in the future, they are building towers around the circumference of Paris. Towers with shining, bluish glass, extensions of the architecture at La Défense. Paris is tall and glorious. The City of Light glitters like a galaxy of freshly minted stars. On the cover of Time magazine, Aide Lefort’s face at age thirty-five: A New Bohemia: My manifesto to change the world.
“DO YOU REMEMBER you told me you had planned to go to Rome?”
“Rome? Oh, yeah. That was ages ago.” I squeeze Léon’s hand. “Before we met.”
We are at his studio, watching back-to-back episodes of Transfusion. I’m not convinced Léon entirely gets Transfusion, but he watches it anyway. For me. The credits roll up. My legs are hooked over his, our fingers interlaced. A rare night off together. I try to relax. I know these rituals of domesticity should make me happy—they are the hallmarks of belonging; they are everything I ever craved—but more and more I feel that this is another realm, strange and unfamiliar. It feels as though I’m moonlighting on someone else’s life.
“I was thinking,” says Léon. “Maybe we should go.”
“To Rome?”
“Why not?”
“On holiday?”
The idea of leaving the anomaly, however briefly, fills me with alarm. I begin to muster excuses for why I can’t possibly go on holiday.
“Maybe for longer.”
I mute the television and twist to face him.
“Longer? You mean... leave Clichy?” The idea is so absurd, I laugh. Leave Clichy! “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m serious. I’ve been here for a long time. Lately I’ve been feeling like I need a change of scene.” He hesitates. “Maybe you do too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You haven’t been around as much. You seem tired all the time. You said you get headaches. I thought perhaps... something was bothering you.”
“Nothing’s bothering me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. And I don’t want to leave Paris. I love Paris. This is my life now. I thought it was yours too. Or was all that talk about not wanting to screw things up just some bullshit excuse?”
“Putain, Hallie—it was just an idea—”
I flop back against the sofa, my words replaying back to me. I’m being unfair, I can see that. How could Léon understand?
“Sorry. Léon, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just... I belong here. The thought of leaving... it makes me anxious. Panicky, I suppose. Like... like what happened at the catacombs.”
Léon doesn’t say anything for a moment, but I can tell he’s upset. I owe him more than this.
“You never did tell me about that,” he says slowly. “About the panic attacks.”
“I thought I’d left it all behind. That’s the thing: you think you’re better, you think you’re over it, and then it happens again.”
“What started it?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
He strokes my hair gently. Somewhere in the distance, the anomaly’s song chimes. Most of the time I barely notice, I am so accustomed to it, but occasionally a note will stand out, reminding me. As if I could forget.
“Try me,” says Léon.
Why not, I think. Anything’s better than talk of leaving Paris. And at least I can be honest about this, even if it’s hard to talk about.
“It’s like... it’s a feeling of being squeezed. Like I’m becoming smaller and smaller until I might... dissolve.”
I slump down deeper in the sofa. Outside, colour is draining from the sky, but neither of us moves to switch on the light.
“Did you ever have something happen which changed the way you thought about everything?”
“Half a dozen times.”
“That was my volcano day.”
It feels odd, to finally
say the words aloud. But here I am, moonlighting. Perhaps that makes it possible. Perhaps it’s not me making the confession at all. It’s the old me, someone I shed months ago.
Léon waits.
“There was an art project, at school. I was always shit at art. Theo and George were brilliant, of course. They take after our parents. But this project was different. We had to make a volcano, and you know I’ve always loved science. I thought, this is it. This is the thing that’s going to earn her approval. My mother. I hero worshipped her, you see. I used to sit outside her studio with my toys for hours, dreaming about all the places I was going to take her when I was this famous explorer.”
There was always a draught in the corridor, but I liked knowing that she was just the other side of the door. As if I was her secret guardian. One day she opened the door before I had time to move out of the way, and she was carrying a painting that was still wet, and she tripped over me and dropped it. The painting was ruined.
After that I was banned from loitering outside the studio.
“Anyway, I planned it all out. I got a load of books from the library. I asked Theo and George for help making it and they both said they would. George showed me this trick with a wire coat hanger, but of course when it came down to it they were both busy and I had to make it myself. It sounds stupid, but I was so upset.”
“You were a kid,” says Léon. “Of course you’d be upset.”
I remember standing on the porch, shivering without my coat. I could feel tears of frustration welling up. George had broken his promise. Theo had gone to one of her numerous friends’ houses. Dad was with Ray Yellowlees and my mother had emerged from her studio at around five o’clock with paint on her face looking dazed, smiled and told me to do my homework, put a crumpet in the toaster, eaten it with shrimp paste, and gone to bed.
“But I still had an opportunity to prove something. I was going to do the coat hanger thing, but then I noticed the door to her studio was open. She must have been totally spaced, she never left that door open.”
In the light from the street lamps outside, I could see something looming in the middle of the room, a deformed shape, almost human, leaning at an angle. It cast a shadow against the opposite wall.
“I went inside. There was the clay figure, whatever it was she was working on. I remember being kind of spooked by it. And then there was some leftover clay beside it. Exactly the right size for a volcano, I thought. So I made the volcano out of clay. I got really into it with the paint and everything, left a note saying I’d take it to school in the morning, and then I went to bed.”
The noise woke me up. It woke everyone up. Shouting and bangs and crashes as furniture was kicked or overturned. At first I thought there were burglars in the house. Then I realized that the shouting was my mother, and the other, confused voice was my father, and then George and Theo started yelling too.
What the hell’s going on?
Ioanna, calm down—
Shut up down there, I’m trying to sleep!
It’s fucking Hallie—she’s fucking destroyed—FUCK! FUCK!
My stomach turned into a bag of snakes. I shook.
Footsteps pounded the stairs. My door flew open. Mum stood there, looking angrier than I had ever seen her in my life.
“Hallie, what the fuck have you done?”
I screamed and hid under the duvet. A hand seized my ankle, yanked me out. Mum grabbed my shoulders. Her face was in my face. She was shaking me so hard I could taste blood in my mouth.
“For god’s sake, Ioanna—”
“Mum, stop it!”
Mum raised her hand and slapped me hard across the face. I fell sideways and slammed into the wall. I saw dots. George yelled, “Jesus Christ, Mum!”
When the dots cleared I saw her face, livid and twisted. It took George and Theo to pull her away. I dove back under the duvet. I heard Mum kick the wall, then punch it. Dad dragged her out of the room. He and George were talking, trying to calm her down. They went downstairs. My door shut. The sounds from below were muffled.
Everything hurt. I thought my teeth were going to fall out. I could feel the indents where her fingers had gripped me and the bruise coming up where my head had hit the wall.
An arm settled on me, on top of the duvet. Theo murmured:
“It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s just... that was her gallery piece. What were you thinking?”
I couldn’t stop shaking. It was a long time before I managed to reply.
“I had to have a volcano. You wouldn’t help me.”
I felt Theo’s arm stiffen. I thought she was going to leave.
“Don’t go away, Theo! She might come back.”
“She won’t. She wouldn’t hurt you, Hal, you know that. She just... lost it for a minute. That work’s worth ten thousand pounds.”
“It looked like a spare bit,” I whispered.
“I know. I know it did. But, you know, that’s art.”
George came back with some ice cubes wrapped in a tea towel. They conversed in low voices. George went away. Theo held the ice against the bruise on my head. She stroked my back while I cried into my pillow. Theo said Mum would never hurt me, but she had. I told myself a story. Theo was an albatross, a strong, beautiful bird from another universe. The albatross’s wing covered me. Its eyes were alert and watchful. I closed my eyes more tightly and told myself the story again, mouthing it into the pillow. I could feel the feathers growing out of Theo’s arm, brushing against my back. Her beak nudged my head, telling me it was all okay. Except it wasn’t.
“The next day we were meant to hand in and I didn’t have anything to show. I knew I couldn’t say what had really happened, so I lied. I said Dad had had an accident in the studio. She believed me, the teacher. I didn’t think she would. Obviously I was glad I got away with it, I was glad she believed me, but the thing I couldn’t stop thinking was how wrong I’d been. To expect help, from any of them. George, Theo. Mum. I should have known all along—I should have known they’d let me down.”
Over the years that followed I road-tested this theory with varying parameters, and I was rarely proven wrong. It was my first scientific experiment.
“Did she ever do that again?”
There’s something dangerous in Léon’s tone.
I shake my head. “No. She wasn’t an abusive parent, it wasn’t like that. It’s not like that. But that one occasion was enough. Because I realised, you see. I realized the art would always come first. The rest of us were just... trappings. Even Dad.”
Léon pulls me closer. I lie in his arms. I don’t know what I expected, telling him this story. Catharsis, redemption? Or simply relief, to have talked and shared? But all I feel is a long-unspoken sadness.
“I didn’t really answer your question. About the panic.”
“It’s okay.”
“They started when I was a teenager. I’ve had them on and off since then. I thought things would be better at university, but the attacks got worse. Like being further away had just made it more obvious how far apart we really were.”
“Hallie. You can’t let anyone make you feel that way. You’re not small. You’re infinite.”
I think, but cannot tell him, when I travel through the anomaly, I do feel infinite. But you can’t follow me there. And I feel suddenly, desperately sad.
A SATURDAY MORNING in early June. It is ten-thirty, working up to a blazing day. Half the night team are sitting in the middle of the boulevard, drinking cans of paint stripper masquerading as beer and cheering the cars that slog past. Gabriela is wearing wings. They are white nylon stretched over a wire frame, and they poke gauzily out from between her shoulder blades. She has make-up smeared across her cheeks, green paint with bits of glitter that glint like scales instead of skin. Our faces, exposed to daylight, are red-eyed and dissipated.
Angel, who is meant to be setting up the bar for a new day but has left the chef in charge, has come to join us for a cigarette and an aperitif. He eyes
the beer cans in disgust.
“Really? Poussins, you are actually drinking this?”
“Bring us some beers, Angel,” begs Bo.
“Non, shots!” Victor staggers to his feet and begins to conduct the air. “Shots, shots, shots!”
“The bar is not open yet,” says Angel, who is sober and, I can tell, enjoying goading us. “You must wait two hours.”
“Man, they won’t notice a few Coronas from the fridge,” Mike cajoles him.
“Actually I am thinking of leaving Millie’s,” says Angel.
Unable to form coherent sentences, we stare at him.
“No—”
“You can’t—”
“This is no life,” says Angel severely. “Poussins, look at you.”
Gabriela takes a picture of him. “You, you are not drunk!” she shouts.
“No. I am sober. And you are very, very drunk, Gabriela. So are you, Bo. And Victor. And Isobel... is she asleep? She will turn red as a tomato, with that complexion. And Mike. And Hallie—”
“I’m less drunk,” I say, which is true, marginally.
“Poussins, we are all of us so good at talking about doing something, but none of us ever does it. Instead we rot away our lives in this minimum-wage hovel, pouring pints for connards who don’t tip and cleaning up their vomit. I cannot stay in Clichy forever. Everybody leaves.”
Bo sits up. “But not you—”
“Everybody.”
Gabriela looks morose, and I pass her the beer can quickly. But Angel’s words have cast a blight upon our party. Victor wakes Isobel, who jolts up in alarm, her brown hair sticking out in a frizz. Bo drains his can.
“I go to the library,” declares Gabriela. She gets unsteadily to her feet. I should go with her, guide her back towards her studio, to sleep. Instead I sneak into Millie’s and go downstairs and open up the keg room. It is cold. Goosebumps rise on my arms and neck. I have come to love this chill, its icy fingers soft against my skin.
